RDF-ISSUE-68 (rdf-concepts-redundancy): Informative section ???RDF Concepts??? in rdf-concepts spec is redundant

RDF-ISSUE-68 (rdf-concepts-redundancy): Informative section “RDF Concepts” in rdf-concepts spec is redundant

http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/68

Raised by: Richard Cyganiak
On product: 

RDF Concepts contains an informative section “RDF Concepts”:
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-concepts/index.html#section-Concepts

This section is quite redundant with later normative sections:
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-concepts/index.html#datatypes-1
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-concepts/index.html#section-Graph-syntax

Both sections describe the RDF data model in detail. The informative section is shorter (~3 pages vs. ~7 normative pages), and it's written in somewhat more accessible (and less precise) language. So it can be seen as a gentler introduction to the RDF data model.

On the other hand, this organization has quite a few downsides:

- spec is three pages longer
- many things are said twice in a very similar way
- readers are confused when looking things up
- there are two subsections named “Datatypes”
- there is a subsection “Literals” and another one “RDF Literals”
- there is a subsection “Graph Data Model” and another one “RDF Graphs”

In summary, I don't think that the informative section pulls its weight, and I think removing it would yield a more usable spec.

There are a few specific paragraphs and items in the informative section that might be worth keeping and folding into the normative sections as informative examples/notes.

Received on Wednesday, 20 July 2011 14:58:39 UTC